Just a little of the way into Term 1 and already I'm re-evaluating everything. Who is with me?
A good reminder today for me from a friend yesterday to "stay the course" strengthened my resolve to do just that, and I think some of you might need it too.
I use Ambleside Online as my main curriculum, adding elements from Mater Amabilis and Connecting with History. I find that I love the Ambleside Curriculum more each day, except for the history, which stirs up in me many different emotions, both good and bad.
The advisory's background, mostly protestant and Calvinist, at that, necessarily presents a history outline that is -- to me-- worse than secular, because it is both incomplete and heretical in its explanation of the role of the Catholic Church in history.
By that I mean that (a) it presents history as this rolling set of events throughout time, not taking into account the things God Himself was doing through these events..... it gives us history, but not salvation history... because Ambleside students are not being made aware of the Church's activity throughout history, and (b) it presents the Catholic Church as the enemy of the Christian spirit in the world. Which is just.... ugh. A secular history program might ignore the church and glorify a nation, which is annoying, but not devastating.
A protestant history program, though, usually lies about the church (and in a sneaky way! Often the great Catholic heroes of history are presented as protestant "Christians" while those Catholics who failed their fellow man are referred to as "Catholics!"). A protestant history program also usually glorifies a nation over others, and promotes heresy. No bueno.
The selection of books in AO's lineup definitely lean towards vilifying the Catholic Church, which I expected, but they also lack the depth of understanding I want for my kids in salvation history: that God was working through the events of world history, that each step in time is a step in the story of the Church. This is a paradigm shift that only ancient-creed Christians can understand as they work through history, and my children would miss that if I stuck to AO as written.
In addition, it's very English-centric, which some people take issue with (I don't, and actually like that) but at the same time it is incredibly American (for example, ascribing glory and honor to pilgrims and puritans and American founding fathers like any Calvinist American evangelical would be likely to do, but which Anglican Brits might not... really.) Protestantism and national patriotism tend to go hand in hand, and do so in a very unreasonable, over the top kind of way, whereas Catholicism is truly universal and accepts the unique role of all nations in Kingdom building.
In other words, it's a bit of a hodgepodge, with some ecclectic stuff, some silly, over-the-top patriotic stuff, and some outright heresy mixed in.
On the other hand, the history booklists are quite good. While there are some recommended books which need to go the way of the trashcan ("GOOD Queen Bess??!"), and quick, other choices are phenomenal and should be passed around to all children.
Ambleside's religion segments, as well, I have a love/hate relationship with. True to Miss Mason's vision, they recommend regular bible reading, devotional reading, and reading on the lives of the saints and martyrs. Unlike Miss Mason, who had a set liturgical year and a sense of Church time and Church teaching, including traditional catechesis, AO's is -again- a bit of a hodgepodge, clearly put together by Christians who don't have a liturgical sense or a common catechetical tradition.
This gives one pause, and at least in my case has often caused me to want to throw the whole thing out the window. But I can't! Ambleside was my first love as a potential homeschooling parent, and something about it keeps me coming back for more each time I start to plan and think.
I have asked many Catholics and Orthodox how they implement the Ambleside curriculum in their homes. Some tell me they don't change it at all, but only discuss everything with their children. This option is unacceptable in our household. We believe we are FORMING our children with what they read.
Others tell me they have removed the religion and history portions, often using Connecting with History instead, and retained the science and literature portions.
I find that hard--- because Ambleside's literature choices are very tied in to their history choices, and the time periods being studied. It truly frustrates me, and keeps me up at night... if I were to do this, I would have to throw out so much of the curriculum that I'd really be starting from scratch.
Ambleside is intense... and rigorous, no doubt about it. I want that for my kids. I also want the huge variety that it brings to the table. I have chosen to make book substitutions, usually based on what I find suggested in Mater Amabilis or Connecting with History. And so far, it has worked beautifully.
I can say that I "use" Ambleside, all the while fully using Mater Amabilis because their booklists are very similar, often a book from AO that isn't used one year in MA is used in a later year.
Connecting with History, on the other hand, has booklists which are really good, but also which have some issues. The program as a whole does some things which are not CM in nature--- it reads voraciously, when CM advised "savoring" a book in small portions and over a long period of time. (for example, AO uses Augustus Caesar's World over two terms in Y6. CWH uses it over one two units, about the space of a month or two.)
It also recommends many books which are selected not for their literary quality but for their "living" nature... in other words, they are poorly written, or at least poorly edited.
Lastly, it presents history in a unit-study sort of way, often recommending science and the arts to be integrated into the historical time period being studied. This can have a place in a CM education, but we don't want to be making connections FOR the child, and we need to be aware of that.
Also, CWH promotes FAMILY history, whereas Ambleside uses individual history. And there are benefits to both. In my case, my children being young, individual reading means that they pay attention and are more present during reading. Nothing like reading aloud to a gaggle of children at the table to make you want to drink.
Even they agree: if you ask my children to choose between family read-alouds and one-on-one read-alouds, they pick one-on-one every time. That might change as they get older, but right now the only person who LOVES family read-alouds would be the toddler who talks through the whole thing about lions or giraffes while we strain to hear the words of the story and not to lose our tempers.
At the same time, it is a lot of work for me doing individual readings... I feel like I spend all my days running from child to child, since my kids are so young.
At the beginning of the planning period for this term, I thought I would use CWH and developed a plan to use their booklists over a term instead of a unit. I found that my kids still had individual reading to do, but that we shared a family read aloud, which really ended up in practice looking a lot like AO.
But I realized quickly that I had made unrealistic expectations for our family, for one thing because I REALLY wanted to keep using some parts of AO that involved historical reading, and for another because it really did NOT simplify our homeschool day the way I had hoped it would. The benefit of it, though, was that my younger kids had some GREAT reading that taught them quite a bit about history. And they truly enjoyed that. We have incredible memories built from our year in Ancient History using CWH. So much so that I've decided to keep going with that, and to pass the upcoming Year 0 kids through the same booklists on ancient history.
This year, after a test run of three weeks on my created AO / MA/ CWH mix, I went back to the peace and calm of AO. There everything always seems to click into place for me--- there is structure and order but also flexibility and freedom... like freedom to add things, or take them away, without totally disrupting the flow of the curriculum.
Still, though, sad that I had to leave CWH behind, I began to do some soul searching. And I realized something profound along the way-- AO works alongside CWH really well, if we remove the presumption that CWH is meant to be used (a) together only and (b) over the course of one year.
The idea of working as a family was very pleasing to me... but the reality was that even as a family, we basically enjoyed one read aloud and then I needed to read separately to each child from a book at their own level.
I had already worked out which chapters of Our Island Story, for example, fit into which units, and marked them in my CWH syllabus. So when I looked at it from my AO history perspective, all I had to do was line up which chapters of Our Island Story we were already reading in AO, and add a book or reading selection that helped bring Catholic perspective from that unit or time period! Duh. I have no idea why this didn't occur to me before, but it did, and it was wonderful. Suddenly, I found myself removing Synge from the AO history list (which I love, but have a real issue with on topics like the reformation-- sad!) and instead replacing it with Our Old World's Gifts to the New using the notes in the Connecting With History syllabus. And that was it! Just a couple, simple changes and I was done, and still using AO almost as-written, but not having to let go of CWH, which I really like. Yay!
I also added some books to the free reading list that added a Catholic perspective. For example, the Little Duke already does that wonderfully, but instead of reading something slightly dark and anti-establishment like Alice in Wonderland, why not read The Boy Knight of Rheims?
So, now I'm happy and my family is happy and my historian dad is happy and everyone is happy. Yay.
"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life-- to know 'Glory' when we see it..." --Charlotte M. Mason
Showing posts with label Connecting With History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Connecting With History. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Book of Centuries
There is a wonderful PNEU article about how to set up a book of centuries which I fully intend to use with a simple composition book once my children are older. I have often had to fight the urge to scrap this one and make one of those, but I'm going to wait a few years.
Since they are young right now, we are using a family Book of Centuries, which is primarily my responsibility to fill in because I'm super type-A and like things to be pretty and orderly... and if my children had charge of it I can only imagine the number of hobbits and butterflies and things I'd find drawn in the margins, which would drive me nuts. Charlotte wanted the child to make the book of centuries HIS OWN, and I assure you that when my kids are old enough, they will. But for now, in the young stages, I keep this family version, and they have their own composition books we call books of centuries but which are actually just books in which they record their narrations or narration maps for every history book they read.
This one stays out and on the table as long as it's a school day, and sometimes even when it's not. On Thursdays (our history day) at tea-time I take it out and we drink tea and eat cookies and go through it, talking about things they like.
As of now, there is not much filled in because we have only covered creation and early civilization alone in a formal way. But I've been asked how I do it, so here are some pictures and an explanation of our own book.
I used a three ring binder with a pattern that spoke to me about history (kinda greek), and printed out the free book of centuries template from Simply Charlotte Mason, not using facing pages and not printing on both sides of the sheets.
I made a nice cover for it and ghetto-laminated it using packing tape (my specialty!), and instead of dividers I use a printed page in papyrus font (my go-to history font!) in sheet protectors for separating the four eras that correspond with the four volumes/years of the Connecting With History Program that we use for studying world history as a family. We make an entry for each of our lessons if appropriate, and it takes less than five minutes to do each time, if that.
On the inside cover, I pasted a key to the codes we use on each main century overview page.:
These include things like wars and conflicts, massacres, rise and fall of a nation, important events in church history, etc.
There are two main sections. One is World Chronology and the other is Geography.
I placed a world map (modern) at the very front for quick access, and then began placing dividers and centuries for each volume of Connecting with History, century by century.
World Chronology has three pages per century, plus some additional pages in the front.
The additional pages start with the story of before the world began. I made these, although one of the pages contains an idea I snatched up about the beginning of time from my favorite Fisher Academy blog.
Then the centuries really begin. There are three pages per century. The first is a grid with 100 squares representing years in each century. We use the codes from above to mark up the overview grid so that we can see it in a kind of at-a-glance way. (bear in mind that ours are not very full yet because we haven't even reached Christ's birth in our family study.)
That's it! Let me know if you have questions, and I hope it helps someone.
And if perchance you find this post to be discouraging rather than helpful, you might enjoy this.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Catholic Family World History plans-- Middle Ages-- for next year
I think I finally have sorted out what books I will be using for next year's Connecting With History, Volume II. I'll be doing things a little differently this year-- following along in each unit but still slowing down the pace of our reading because last year we tried to read everything on the list. Although I enjoyed it, I think the kids felt a bit rushed and also.... I think it wasn't as CM as it could have been, since she advocated building a long, slow relationship with only the BEST books. I really want us to stay as faithful to CM's methods as we can.
This year I have one kid in Grade 2, one in Grade 1, one in Prep, and one in Awakening. ;)
I plan to include tales from each unit in our term's literature/tales reading, and saints in each term's catechism/church history reading, just as we did last year in our study of the Ancient World.
History readings will include work from the spine (Our Island Story), Catholic supplementation (Founders of Freedom for the littles and Old World's Gifts to the New for the oldest), and one historical literature book per term that I felt encompasses the era.
We will still be doing age appropriate copywork and memory work from CWH, bible reading, as well as narration topics for testing understanding, activities (one per unit), a book of centuries, mapwork, and presenting (usually a play) at the end.
I know I've been asked a few times which way I'm going to go, so here are the final choices I've made.
The family read-aloud is Our Island Story, Founders of Freedom, and also the reading from the lives of the saints each unit, and the rest are individual assignments.
For MA users Prep Level/ AO users Y0/ Grade Prek/ K:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once Upon a Time Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: Spend the day in Ancient Rome, Mary my Mother, Good St Joseph, The Apostles of Jesus, Pompeii: Buried alive
Term 2: St Valentine, St George and the Dragon, St Brigid, and Hodges' King Arthur
Term 3: Usborne time traveler: Vikings
For MA users Level 1B/ AO Y1/ Grade 1:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once upon a time saints and More once upon a time saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: St Paul the Apostle by Windeatt
Term 2:King Arthur Tales from the Round Table
Term 3: Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire
For MA users Level 1A (1) / AOY2 / Grade 2:
Core: The Old World's Gifts to the New and Our Island Story
Saints: 57 Stories of Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: Augustus Caesar's World
Term 2: King Arthur and His Knights
Term 3: Viking Tales
This year I have one kid in Grade 2, one in Grade 1, one in Prep, and one in Awakening. ;)
I plan to include tales from each unit in our term's literature/tales reading, and saints in each term's catechism/church history reading, just as we did last year in our study of the Ancient World.
History readings will include work from the spine (Our Island Story), Catholic supplementation (Founders of Freedom for the littles and Old World's Gifts to the New for the oldest), and one historical literature book per term that I felt encompasses the era.
We will still be doing age appropriate copywork and memory work from CWH, bible reading, as well as narration topics for testing understanding, activities (one per unit), a book of centuries, mapwork, and presenting (usually a play) at the end.
I know I've been asked a few times which way I'm going to go, so here are the final choices I've made.
The family read-aloud is Our Island Story, Founders of Freedom, and also the reading from the lives of the saints each unit, and the rest are individual assignments.
For MA users Prep Level/ AO users Y0/ Grade Prek/ K:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once Upon a Time Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: Spend the day in Ancient Rome, Mary my Mother, Good St Joseph, The Apostles of Jesus, Pompeii: Buried alive
Term 2: St Valentine, St George and the Dragon, St Brigid, and Hodges' King Arthur
Term 3: Usborne time traveler: Vikings
For MA users Level 1B/ AO Y1/ Grade 1:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once upon a time saints and More once upon a time saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: St Paul the Apostle by Windeatt
Term 2:King Arthur Tales from the Round Table
Term 3: Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire
For MA users Level 1A (1) / AOY2 / Grade 2:
Core: The Old World's Gifts to the New and Our Island Story
Saints: 57 Stories of Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants
Term 1: Augustus Caesar's World
Term 2: King Arthur and His Knights
Term 3: Viking Tales
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Using Our Island Story with Connecting with History
For those of you using Ambleside Online or Mater Amabilis and who want to use the amazing book Our Island Story in conjunction with the Connecting With History program, I've separated the chapters of the book down into CWH's Units using a timeline for the chapters I found on Ambleside's website as well as the list of England's rulers in the index of the book. I have gone over it twice, but I haven't been sleeping much so I may have to come back and edit this again. For now, anyways, it looks accurate to me. If you find an error, please let me know!
Hopefully this helps someone else out there who was feeling as conflicted as I have been about dropping OIS in order to use Connecting With History because it was just "too much reading." ;)
CWH Volume I
Unit 1: Chapter 1
Unit 10: Chapter 2
CWH Volume II
Unit 1: Chapter 3
Unit 3: Chapters 4-5
Unit 4: Chapter 6
Unit 5: Chapters 7-11
Unit 6: Chapters 12-14
Unit 7: Chapters 15-20
CWH Volume III
Unit 2: Chapters 21-36
Unit 3: Chapters 37-42
Unit 4: Chapters 43-51
Unit 5: Chapters 52-61
Units 6 & 7: Chapters 62-73
Unit 8 parts 1 & 2 : Chapters 74-88
CWH Volume IV has not been released yet, and so I cannot do the rest of the book until it is.
Chapters 89-110 will be used in Volume IV, and those dates are from 1702-1952.
If I remember, I will update this when it comes out (help me to remember if I forget... otherwise you will have to wait two years til I am thinking about how we are going to use Volume IV in our own homeschool.)
Below is a PDF of the above schedule, and also a PDF chronological list of saints to use in your History study (for biographies, saint study during catechism, etc.)
and
Friday, May 31, 2013
Making sense out of history
I've been asked to elaborate on how I make Connecting With History work in our homeschool, since I combined it in the past with my Catholic Ambleside curriculum, and will continue next year to combine Ambleside Online, Mater Amabilis, and Connecting with History. (CWH)
First, I will say that each of these have their "history" strengths and weaknesses.
Ambleside is full of wonderful history selections, and I deeply admire the advisory's commitment to using original source and free material as much as possible. That being said, I firmly believe that their history is biased and whig-centered, anti-Catholic, and therefore (perhaps not purposely, but nonetheless substantially) dishonest. At the very least, it's incomplete. For those who are wondering what I'm talking about, I can give a simple example. In many of Ambleside's selected readings, when a Catholic person is doing something noble and heroic, he is called "a Christian" and his interest in the Bible, evangelism, etc. is played up, whereas his commitment to the Church, the Saints, etc is completely ignored, despite the historical facts of his faith and personality. However when a famous Catholic does something bad or questionable, he is called "a Catholic," and his commitment to the Church is played up... which is, quite frankly, diabolical. Another example is that there have been substantial Catholic contributions to Ambleside's body of work (curriculum, information, articles, personal information about Charlotte gathered in research, etc.) which have gone completely unacknowledged or unattributed, and every attempt by these contributors to provide an environment which is inclusive for both Protestants AND Catholics has been met with resistance. The reason, I'm beginning to discover, is that the majority of the movers and shakers who have worked hard to provide such a wonderful curriculum follow reformed theology, which essentially rejects Catholicism as a form of Christianity and also rejects philosophy and the use of logic/reason, which are a critical part of a liberal arts curriculum such as CM advocated. This information has greatly saddened me as I have been discovering it, but I think we all already knew that Ambleside's selections provide a very Calvinsist-centric view of the Christianity and thus, the world just by looking at some of their selections for Church History. I'm by no means arguing against using Ambleside, so PLEASE don't misunderstand me. It is absolutely phenomenal as a curriculum and deserves many praises! But for us Catholics, who know better, we need to be very aware of Ambleside's limitations in the scope of teaching history.
Mater Amabilis' history selections are excellent. I like them so much I am using them! I like them so much I am using them despite the fact that I am also using something else! But I am modifying their use because I have several students of several different ages and I need things to be very simple in my homeschool. If I had only one or two students, I would leave Mater Amabilis exactly as it is and use it as recommended. And as a side note to Catholic readers, don't ever feel like you are settling for a second-rate, "Catholic version of Ambleside Online" when using it. Mater Amabilis is an original creation based entirely on the research of its creators, who have themselves spent time at Ambleside, England studying Charlotte Mason themselves from her own sources, and who have made great contributions to the Ambleside Online curriculum. So don't feel that you are settling. With Mater Amabilis, know that you are getting the very best of Charlotte Mason's original ideas and work, and often, in my opinion, a more honest example of what Charlotte would have said/done considering that her faith background, as a lifelong member of the Church of England with many close Catholic connections (like GK Chesterton's wife!! Squee!!), is much closer to Catholic than to the reformed tradition. Ultimately, Charlotte's theology isn't the "bigger picture" point, and I'm not arguing for one curriculum OVER the other in that I think both perspectives have value for people of either religious persuasion, but I do think that it bears mentioning so that people who use MA with a sigh of resignation can be encouraged.... Mater Amabilis is authentically Charlotte Mason, and is inspired directly from her own choices and sources, not by those of Ambleside Online, therefore remaining faithful to her method.
Connecting with History uses living books, is solidly Catholic in nature, and is very complete. It is chronological (yay) and can quite honestly be a spine for all the rest of your work... if you like unit studies (I don't, and CM didn't.) The only downside to this program, in my view, is that instead of savoring one book all the way through we stuff ourselves with like, twenty different history titles as quickly as possible (the program sometimes recommends reading 2-3 chapters PER DAY. Aint nobody got time fo dat!! Other down sides people often mention is the cost of books (not a problem over here, and I'll tell you why in a minute) and not having lesson plans (also, not a problem. Here we go!)
Most CM-folk agree that we need to be teaching history in two tracks: a national history and a world history simultaneously. Most CM-folk also agree that it's best if the child can keep his own history reading going at his own level.... and yet most large-family mamas will tell you they are terrified of keeping track of each individual child's reading or of the amount of time it will take to sit down with each kid individually until they are able to get their own thing going on.
That's why I've chosen to combine all those solutions into an easy method: I use CWH for world history, working all together with personal assignments here and there and I use the AO/MA combined ideas to develop a national history track that is tailor made for each student.
Meanwhile, If you've ever heard an experienced CM parent say anything to other, new homeschooling moms I am sure it was this:
And they swear it's true. ;)
Sooooo..... what to do? There really is just so much good stuff out there!
First, I think, the key is to keep things simple, especially at the beginning, and to select QUALITY over QUANTITY. When in doubt, do less.
Because Connecting with History does such a great job of covering so much ground (poems and scripture to memorize, picture study, history, geography, copywork, dictation, saints, Bible) it forms the groundwork for much of the day...And we do something from it every day.
Connecting with history operates on a plan: The first part is an introduction, the second is an in-depth study portion, the third is a project/activity/telling/wrap up portion. They are slowly releasing lesson plans, but you don't need lesson plans to make it work.
I tend to do one time period (unit) per month, which gives me four weeks per unit. The first week is the introductory week. I do my background reading (if there is anything I'm not familiar with) and the first night around the dinner table, I introduce the discussion questions. Second night we might watch a movie from that time period and casually introduce the new poem and scripture to be memorized. In that first week, we will do all of the initial readings from the spine (I do Founders of Freedom for the really little kids and Old World's Gifts for the oldest. I do that because they requested it, and NOT because I have to... either one of those would work great for all of them.) I break down the reading from those into two days worth of readings because I have history scheduled for a short period on Monday and again on Thursday. If you have history scheduled every day you could read a smaller portion each day, but I find it is possible to get it all done on two days and focus on literature the other days.
Connecting with History has wonderful literature selections, but Charlotte Mason wasn't a fan of unit studies. If a literature selection is absolutely marvelous, I might opt to use it, but the majority of our literature comes from the AO/MA booklists and is not usually based on the history unit being read. There are enough living non-fiction history books to keep your kids learning and loving history, and my personal opinion is that many of the historical lit selections available for young people are not well written, only "alive" in the sense that they are purposely descriptive. I want my kids to have THE BEST, so I avoid many of the historical literature selections that I find to be... living twaddle. (A perfect example is the highly acclaimed living math book from CWH Volume I called "What's your angle, Pythagoras?" Completely historically inaccurate, and poorly written, it was a huge waste of our time and money.)
I have a religion slot first thing in the morning, after breakfast. We tend to do Catechism and Saints in the morning and Bible at night, but sometimes I switch it up. In that slot we will do the CWH religious readings--- whichever bible and saints stories are scheduled for that unit. Because we are a CM homeschool, in addition to reading the selected story I have my children narrate it. Before I do it, I drill them on their catechism lessons, for about five minutes, so all together the religion period takes about twenty minutes. After we read and narrate, we might discuss one aspect of what we read, or just say a little prayer.
I have a history period scheduled on Mondays and again on Thursday, and it is for a family read aloud. So for twenty minutes I will do the read aloud. The first week, as I said, I will read from the spine. The second and third week I will read from the selected book. (I use their beginning level read alouds-- and one or two of the important grammar level ones.) When they get older and can read independently, we will use that time to do their independent reading. After I read I will ask for narration, and allow them to ask questions. During the fourth week, there is not any reading to do (or perhaps just a small amount) and so we use that time for activities and events and working on their presentation. Part of their history lesson is always to record (or right now, watch me record) the events and people they are reading about in their book of centuries. Because we are a CM family, we don't do endless notebooking pages, but we do for example, write down a narration and illustrate it, or make what I call a "narration map" as I read (the child draws the events as we read and then uses it to narrate to me) and include those in our notebooks. We also include pictures of our project/activity and presentation. I'm not into crafts, so we don't do anything crazy.
Wednesday is my geography day. On Wednesdays I have a geography period scheduled with twenty minutes of reading and ten minutes of map drills, so if there is appropriate geography reading that goes along with CWH I will use that and ask for narration, then do a map drill. If not, I will continue to read selections from that unit's book list-- an additional saint story, for example, although I do try to make it one that has helpful reading about geography. I might also use that time to watch a netflix documentary or something relating to the geography of the place we are studying if I'm out of reading.
As I said, the last week is the activity week, and we do one or two of the suggested activities (games, charts, etc.) and finally rounding it out with a play or a dinner party. In our homeschool daddy is very involved in all things schooling, so we don't take the time to tell him all about what we have learned, but in other families, that would be a great wrap-up activity.
Doing it this way DRASTICALLY reduces the book cost because I'm not reading every single book on the list. In fact, for most of the year (in fact, all the years!) all we really need is one of the saints stories compilations, a bible, our spine (founders of freedom, or the old world's gifts), and one family read aloud per unit (so about ten "new" books per unit. I also found a used copy of MB Synge's World History series and I use that to fill in when I don't have the budget for a new book that month or when I feel like my money could be better used elsewhere. It takes a little bit of legwork to find the spot in the Synge series where we need to be reading from, but I absolutely LOVE the series, my kids do too, and we are never bummed that we don't have a "new" book on the days we don't.
Also, it goes without saying that if you buy one book a month vs buying them all at once it's easier on the budget. I have found many of them used via ebay, amazon, etc. But yes, you can successfully teach the CWH program using just the saints, the bible, and whichever age-appropriate "core" book you will use.
On Thursdays, I also do a family read aloud from their national history track. Last year, we did Our Island Story, this year we will continue to do Our Island Story but also add Guerber's 13 Colonies (or perhaps This Country of Ours, the jury is still still out on that one.) OIS will be for my first grader and 13 Colonies for my second grader, but naturally they will often overlap/ hear each other's readings, and that's just fine with me. :)
One other thing I have done to combine is to incorporate some of the AO/MA readings that I loved in the appropriate Connecting with History unit. So, for example, we will be reading The Little Duke, an AO selection from Y2, all in one month and over the regular time period it covers (in Volume II of CWH), instead of over one year.
As they get older, they will continue to do many of the history readings that are original source material and just really good books from Ambleside and Mater Amabilis. I will be particularly cautious when it comes to Ambleside's selections because of the skewed view of history. For example, I do have and can't wait to use Churchill's History of the English Speaking People. However, I find him to be a bit of a pompous imperialist with very little regard for indigenous people, and I will make sure to counter balance their studies at that time with something that helps them see that.
Most of Mater Amabilis' religion suggestions (outside of the advent and lent selections) are found in CWH, so we aren't skipping those, just using them differently.
Ultimately, using Connecting With History this way has helped me to unite my entire family and make good use of our time while the children are so very young. I may discover that as they get older they can be freed from "family history" and switched over to JUST the AO/MA selections, but again, most of them are the same as those found in CWH, so... why not continue this way? I'll see how I feel about it when we get there.
Does that answer questions about how to combine a family history curriculum with AO or MA? If not, please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer!
First, I will say that each of these have their "history" strengths and weaknesses.
Ambleside is full of wonderful history selections, and I deeply admire the advisory's commitment to using original source and free material as much as possible. That being said, I firmly believe that their history is biased and whig-centered, anti-Catholic, and therefore (perhaps not purposely, but nonetheless substantially) dishonest. At the very least, it's incomplete. For those who are wondering what I'm talking about, I can give a simple example. In many of Ambleside's selected readings, when a Catholic person is doing something noble and heroic, he is called "a Christian" and his interest in the Bible, evangelism, etc. is played up, whereas his commitment to the Church, the Saints, etc is completely ignored, despite the historical facts of his faith and personality. However when a famous Catholic does something bad or questionable, he is called "a Catholic," and his commitment to the Church is played up... which is, quite frankly, diabolical. Another example is that there have been substantial Catholic contributions to Ambleside's body of work (curriculum, information, articles, personal information about Charlotte gathered in research, etc.) which have gone completely unacknowledged or unattributed, and every attempt by these contributors to provide an environment which is inclusive for both Protestants AND Catholics has been met with resistance. The reason, I'm beginning to discover, is that the majority of the movers and shakers who have worked hard to provide such a wonderful curriculum follow reformed theology, which essentially rejects Catholicism as a form of Christianity and also rejects philosophy and the use of logic/reason, which are a critical part of a liberal arts curriculum such as CM advocated. This information has greatly saddened me as I have been discovering it, but I think we all already knew that Ambleside's selections provide a very Calvinsist-centric view of the Christianity and thus, the world just by looking at some of their selections for Church History. I'm by no means arguing against using Ambleside, so PLEASE don't misunderstand me. It is absolutely phenomenal as a curriculum and deserves many praises! But for us Catholics, who know better, we need to be very aware of Ambleside's limitations in the scope of teaching history.
Mater Amabilis' history selections are excellent. I like them so much I am using them! I like them so much I am using them despite the fact that I am also using something else! But I am modifying their use because I have several students of several different ages and I need things to be very simple in my homeschool. If I had only one or two students, I would leave Mater Amabilis exactly as it is and use it as recommended. And as a side note to Catholic readers, don't ever feel like you are settling for a second-rate, "Catholic version of Ambleside Online" when using it. Mater Amabilis is an original creation based entirely on the research of its creators, who have themselves spent time at Ambleside, England studying Charlotte Mason themselves from her own sources, and who have made great contributions to the Ambleside Online curriculum. So don't feel that you are settling. With Mater Amabilis, know that you are getting the very best of Charlotte Mason's original ideas and work, and often, in my opinion, a more honest example of what Charlotte would have said/done considering that her faith background, as a lifelong member of the Church of England with many close Catholic connections (like GK Chesterton's wife!! Squee!!), is much closer to Catholic than to the reformed tradition. Ultimately, Charlotte's theology isn't the "bigger picture" point, and I'm not arguing for one curriculum OVER the other in that I think both perspectives have value for people of either religious persuasion, but I do think that it bears mentioning so that people who use MA with a sigh of resignation can be encouraged.... Mater Amabilis is authentically Charlotte Mason, and is inspired directly from her own choices and sources, not by those of Ambleside Online, therefore remaining faithful to her method.
Connecting with History uses living books, is solidly Catholic in nature, and is very complete. It is chronological (yay) and can quite honestly be a spine for all the rest of your work... if you like unit studies (I don't, and CM didn't.) The only downside to this program, in my view, is that instead of savoring one book all the way through we stuff ourselves with like, twenty different history titles as quickly as possible (the program sometimes recommends reading 2-3 chapters PER DAY. Aint nobody got time fo dat!! Other down sides people often mention is the cost of books (not a problem over here, and I'll tell you why in a minute) and not having lesson plans (also, not a problem. Here we go!)
Most CM-folk agree that we need to be teaching history in two tracks: a national history and a world history simultaneously. Most CM-folk also agree that it's best if the child can keep his own history reading going at his own level.... and yet most large-family mamas will tell you they are terrified of keeping track of each individual child's reading or of the amount of time it will take to sit down with each kid individually until they are able to get their own thing going on.
That's why I've chosen to combine all those solutions into an easy method: I use CWH for world history, working all together with personal assignments here and there and I use the AO/MA combined ideas to develop a national history track that is tailor made for each student.
Meanwhile, If you've ever heard an experienced CM parent say anything to other, new homeschooling moms I am sure it was this:
"Less is More."
And they swear it's true. ;)
Sooooo..... what to do? There really is just so much good stuff out there!
First, I think, the key is to keep things simple, especially at the beginning, and to select QUALITY over QUANTITY. When in doubt, do less.
Because Connecting with History does such a great job of covering so much ground (poems and scripture to memorize, picture study, history, geography, copywork, dictation, saints, Bible) it forms the groundwork for much of the day...And we do something from it every day.
Connecting with history operates on a plan: The first part is an introduction, the second is an in-depth study portion, the third is a project/activity/telling/wrap up portion. They are slowly releasing lesson plans, but you don't need lesson plans to make it work.
I tend to do one time period (unit) per month, which gives me four weeks per unit. The first week is the introductory week. I do my background reading (if there is anything I'm not familiar with) and the first night around the dinner table, I introduce the discussion questions. Second night we might watch a movie from that time period and casually introduce the new poem and scripture to be memorized. In that first week, we will do all of the initial readings from the spine (I do Founders of Freedom for the really little kids and Old World's Gifts for the oldest. I do that because they requested it, and NOT because I have to... either one of those would work great for all of them.) I break down the reading from those into two days worth of readings because I have history scheduled for a short period on Monday and again on Thursday. If you have history scheduled every day you could read a smaller portion each day, but I find it is possible to get it all done on two days and focus on literature the other days.
Connecting with History has wonderful literature selections, but Charlotte Mason wasn't a fan of unit studies. If a literature selection is absolutely marvelous, I might opt to use it, but the majority of our literature comes from the AO/MA booklists and is not usually based on the history unit being read. There are enough living non-fiction history books to keep your kids learning and loving history, and my personal opinion is that many of the historical lit selections available for young people are not well written, only "alive" in the sense that they are purposely descriptive. I want my kids to have THE BEST, so I avoid many of the historical literature selections that I find to be... living twaddle. (A perfect example is the highly acclaimed living math book from CWH Volume I called "What's your angle, Pythagoras?" Completely historically inaccurate, and poorly written, it was a huge waste of our time and money.)
I have a religion slot first thing in the morning, after breakfast. We tend to do Catechism and Saints in the morning and Bible at night, but sometimes I switch it up. In that slot we will do the CWH religious readings--- whichever bible and saints stories are scheduled for that unit. Because we are a CM homeschool, in addition to reading the selected story I have my children narrate it. Before I do it, I drill them on their catechism lessons, for about five minutes, so all together the religion period takes about twenty minutes. After we read and narrate, we might discuss one aspect of what we read, or just say a little prayer.
I have a history period scheduled on Mondays and again on Thursday, and it is for a family read aloud. So for twenty minutes I will do the read aloud. The first week, as I said, I will read from the spine. The second and third week I will read from the selected book. (I use their beginning level read alouds-- and one or two of the important grammar level ones.) When they get older and can read independently, we will use that time to do their independent reading. After I read I will ask for narration, and allow them to ask questions. During the fourth week, there is not any reading to do (or perhaps just a small amount) and so we use that time for activities and events and working on their presentation. Part of their history lesson is always to record (or right now, watch me record) the events and people they are reading about in their book of centuries. Because we are a CM family, we don't do endless notebooking pages, but we do for example, write down a narration and illustrate it, or make what I call a "narration map" as I read (the child draws the events as we read and then uses it to narrate to me) and include those in our notebooks. We also include pictures of our project/activity and presentation. I'm not into crafts, so we don't do anything crazy.
Wednesday is my geography day. On Wednesdays I have a geography period scheduled with twenty minutes of reading and ten minutes of map drills, so if there is appropriate geography reading that goes along with CWH I will use that and ask for narration, then do a map drill. If not, I will continue to read selections from that unit's book list-- an additional saint story, for example, although I do try to make it one that has helpful reading about geography. I might also use that time to watch a netflix documentary or something relating to the geography of the place we are studying if I'm out of reading.
As I said, the last week is the activity week, and we do one or two of the suggested activities (games, charts, etc.) and finally rounding it out with a play or a dinner party. In our homeschool daddy is very involved in all things schooling, so we don't take the time to tell him all about what we have learned, but in other families, that would be a great wrap-up activity.
Doing it this way DRASTICALLY reduces the book cost because I'm not reading every single book on the list. In fact, for most of the year (in fact, all the years!) all we really need is one of the saints stories compilations, a bible, our spine (founders of freedom, or the old world's gifts), and one family read aloud per unit (so about ten "new" books per unit. I also found a used copy of MB Synge's World History series and I use that to fill in when I don't have the budget for a new book that month or when I feel like my money could be better used elsewhere. It takes a little bit of legwork to find the spot in the Synge series where we need to be reading from, but I absolutely LOVE the series, my kids do too, and we are never bummed that we don't have a "new" book on the days we don't.
Also, it goes without saying that if you buy one book a month vs buying them all at once it's easier on the budget. I have found many of them used via ebay, amazon, etc. But yes, you can successfully teach the CWH program using just the saints, the bible, and whichever age-appropriate "core" book you will use.
On Thursdays, I also do a family read aloud from their national history track. Last year, we did Our Island Story, this year we will continue to do Our Island Story but also add Guerber's 13 Colonies (or perhaps This Country of Ours, the jury is still still out on that one.) OIS will be for my first grader and 13 Colonies for my second grader, but naturally they will often overlap/ hear each other's readings, and that's just fine with me. :)
One other thing I have done to combine is to incorporate some of the AO/MA readings that I loved in the appropriate Connecting with History unit. So, for example, we will be reading The Little Duke, an AO selection from Y2, all in one month and over the regular time period it covers (in Volume II of CWH), instead of over one year.
As they get older, they will continue to do many of the history readings that are original source material and just really good books from Ambleside and Mater Amabilis. I will be particularly cautious when it comes to Ambleside's selections because of the skewed view of history. For example, I do have and can't wait to use Churchill's History of the English Speaking People. However, I find him to be a bit of a pompous imperialist with very little regard for indigenous people, and I will make sure to counter balance their studies at that time with something that helps them see that.
Most of Mater Amabilis' religion suggestions (outside of the advent and lent selections) are found in CWH, so we aren't skipping those, just using them differently.
Ultimately, using Connecting With History this way has helped me to unite my entire family and make good use of our time while the children are so very young. I may discover that as they get older they can be freed from "family history" and switched over to JUST the AO/MA selections, but again, most of them are the same as those found in CWH, so... why not continue this way? I'll see how I feel about it when we get there.
Does that answer questions about how to combine a family history curriculum with AO or MA? If not, please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer!
Monday, June 4, 2012
Mama mondays-- How to make a Curriculum Organizer
We have been using the scripture memory system for some time. It is based on index cards you read aloud each day to save time in scripture memorization which I picked up from Simply Charlotte Mason.
And though it works well, I find that I have the same success just opening my bible with the kids to whatever scripture we are memorizing and reading it every day for a week than I do spending all this time writing out the passages on cards and sorting them/moving them around. The theme in this house is and always will be: "simplify, simplify." Because of this, I had to change the way we did scripture memory because though for some it might be a time saver, and it has a definite appeal, for me, it was too complex and really created a lot of unnecessary work.
With that in mind, I started looking for a good use for this perfectly nice little box and tons of blank index cards.
I eventually began playing around with keeping booklists in it and before I knew it I had created this wonderful system that perfectly meets my needs for sorting and organizing curriculum and booklists.
Up until then, I had been sitting down to do and re-do endless excel spreadsheets or making binders with different tabs that never seemed to work to get my mind organized as I planned ahead for future years. It involved going back and forth between all these documents I had to create with separate booklists I needed to combine by month and year and then re-do according to my children's varying abilities and interests. Now I just move a couple cards around when inspiration strikes and boom. Done.
So, following is a step by step guide to making a really easy and interesting-- and fun-- curriculum organizer for those of us who make our own and need some help with organizing.
You will need:
One card file box
Index cards
Pens of varying colors
A-Z card index guides
Post it flags or other adhesive tabs
Your booklists and plans for curriculum.
First, Place the A-Z card guides in the very back, and label and number a number of cards with homemade index tabs according to your needs. (I did: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, and Volume IV (these stand for the Volumes of "Connecting with History," our history/geo/bible modules which extend over four years), Science and Nature, Fine Arts, Resources, PreK/K, One each for each grade level 1-12.) These particular tabs work for us because we have a curriculum based mostly on living books and we combine history/science/ fine arts as a family and by modules from Connecting with History. Yours may look very different.
I put cards containing the complete booklists for each age level behind the appropriate volume tab. Then I put cards for each of the books that aren't on the Connecting with History booklist but that we will/ are reading with each volume because we think they should be. Behind the science tab, we put science/nature specific nonfiction and biographies, same for the fine arts section. Behind the resource section are all the resources I use for supplies, for curriculum, for ideas, etc. Behind the grade level tabs I have one card that contains the core curriculum for each grade level, and then whatever books we will use for that year.
For example, behind the PreK/K tab I have the entire Five in a Row booklist (which forms the core of PreK and K here) and some other books we use each day, and then I put the separate cards for all the additional read-alouds I want to do that year.
The beauty of this is that I can just move the cards around when the next kid hits that grade level and I want to make changes, instead of having to spend forever re-doing excel spreadsheets or binders like I have done in the past. Takes ten seconds instead of twenty minutes, which is great. Behind the A-Z tabs are cards for the books we plan to use at some point that is either not in use yet or don't fit into the other categories because they are literature.
All the individual cards for books contain: age ranges on the top right for easy sorting, title, author, publisher, a snippet about the book/ notes like which illustrated version to look for, number of pages, separations (chapters?) format (PB/Hardcover, etc) and approximate price on amazon.
And that's it! Super easy to use, I had fun making it, and I've used it every day since making it (because I think about education that much. :D)
Hope it helps somebody out there!
And though it works well, I find that I have the same success just opening my bible with the kids to whatever scripture we are memorizing and reading it every day for a week than I do spending all this time writing out the passages on cards and sorting them/moving them around. The theme in this house is and always will be: "simplify, simplify." Because of this, I had to change the way we did scripture memory because though for some it might be a time saver, and it has a definite appeal, for me, it was too complex and really created a lot of unnecessary work.
With that in mind, I started looking for a good use for this perfectly nice little box and tons of blank index cards.
I eventually began playing around with keeping booklists in it and before I knew it I had created this wonderful system that perfectly meets my needs for sorting and organizing curriculum and booklists.
Up until then, I had been sitting down to do and re-do endless excel spreadsheets or making binders with different tabs that never seemed to work to get my mind organized as I planned ahead for future years. It involved going back and forth between all these documents I had to create with separate booklists I needed to combine by month and year and then re-do according to my children's varying abilities and interests. Now I just move a couple cards around when inspiration strikes and boom. Done.
So, following is a step by step guide to making a really easy and interesting-- and fun-- curriculum organizer for those of us who make our own and need some help with organizing.
You will need:
One card file box
Index cards
Pens of varying colors
A-Z card index guides
Post it flags or other adhesive tabs
Your booklists and plans for curriculum.
First, Place the A-Z card guides in the very back, and label and number a number of cards with homemade index tabs according to your needs. (I did: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, and Volume IV (these stand for the Volumes of "Connecting with History," our history/geo/bible modules which extend over four years), Science and Nature, Fine Arts, Resources, PreK/K, One each for each grade level 1-12.) These particular tabs work for us because we have a curriculum based mostly on living books and we combine history/science/ fine arts as a family and by modules from Connecting with History. Yours may look very different.
I put cards containing the complete booklists for each age level behind the appropriate volume tab. Then I put cards for each of the books that aren't on the Connecting with History booklist but that we will/ are reading with each volume because we think they should be. Behind the science tab, we put science/nature specific nonfiction and biographies, same for the fine arts section. Behind the resource section are all the resources I use for supplies, for curriculum, for ideas, etc. Behind the grade level tabs I have one card that contains the core curriculum for each grade level, and then whatever books we will use for that year.
For example, behind the PreK/K tab I have the entire Five in a Row booklist (which forms the core of PreK and K here) and some other books we use each day, and then I put the separate cards for all the additional read-alouds I want to do that year.
The beauty of this is that I can just move the cards around when the next kid hits that grade level and I want to make changes, instead of having to spend forever re-doing excel spreadsheets or binders like I have done in the past. Takes ten seconds instead of twenty minutes, which is great. Behind the A-Z tabs are cards for the books we plan to use at some point that is either not in use yet or don't fit into the other categories because they are literature.
All the individual cards for books contain: age ranges on the top right for easy sorting, title, author, publisher, a snippet about the book/ notes like which illustrated version to look for, number of pages, separations (chapters?) format (PB/Hardcover, etc) and approximate price on amazon.
And that's it! Super easy to use, I had fun making it, and I've used it every day since making it (because I think about education that much. :D)
Hope it helps somebody out there!
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